


Men of Passion

by heartBEater



Category: Big Bang (Band), GTOP (Band)
Genre: Angst, Drug Addiction, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Military, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-03-29
Packaged: 2018-01-07 17:33:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartBEater/pseuds/heartBEater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"When I like something, I see the end of it and that’s why I get sick of it so easily."</p><p>Playing with fire is fun. Burning your fingers is painful. You cannot have one without the other, but they would never learn, would they?</p><p>Angsty angst and drugs.<br/>______________________________________________</p><p>Quote comes from T.O.P's Interview for W: Running on Empty (November 2013).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ultimatum

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something that produces a sense of utter despair, and I think that drug theme is a very obvious start for that pairing. But I also wanted to poke the topic of Korean obligatory enlistment and whether artists adapt to it as well as the national propaganda reports (considering the affairs, they don't, not really).

An ultimatum. A condition that has to be fulfilled if your life is to retain its meaning, if you want to keep on living, 'cause if you lose that one thing, you lose it all. You have to be a good boy and obey, unless you want the construction of your 'now,' together with its elegant eight floors of piled-up dreams, to fall on your head. The entirety of your life crumbling down, level after level, brick after brick, to the very cornerstone of existence – hope. Rubble grumbled under his feet and he choked on dry dust.

“Drop it. Drop it 'cause I can't go on like that. I can't forever live watching you dance on the verge of this damn pit. Drop it.”

Just that.

Cruel. He didn't know how hard it was.

The body was on fire and couldn't be cheated with nicotine nor alcohol. The mind didn't want to gallop without a stimulant, not any longer. It screamed for help, it screamed with every nerve that it was too late. The pain rose gradually, with each day, then with each week. And Seunghyun believed it was his salvation. He believed that overcoming the addiction would prove that Jiyong valued him more than drugs. What a joke. Of course he did. Drugs didn't have anything to do with it. They were healing in the same way stitches were, they helped him to keep all the pieces of himself together. But Seunghyun didn't understand that and Jiyong couldn't explain it to him any better.

Cruel. Making his untold feelings a hostage.

So Jiyong promised, and so came the frustration. He never thought it'd be like that. He'd thought if he had a really good reason, he could stop. He'd thought he was strong enough. He wasn't. He was losing. He only hoped Seunghyun wouldn't notice. But the man was so careful to notice things those days.

All he needed was a little break. He deserved it. He knew it would help. He could win then.

What Seunghyun didn't see, didn't hurt him.

He started wishing for more work, maybe another movie-making, for Seunghyun, so they wouldn't have  time to see each other. He could unwind in the meantime and Seunghyun would never know. It would've been so simple. He should've remembered life was never so.

That was his first mistake. The second one was forgetting that when you've had a break it doesn't take much to get you sky-rocketing over the moon, and he took enough to fly to Mars. But his third mistake was that on his way there he stopped at the debauched Venus.

Those guys he partied with, who gave him the stuff, they were all so nice, all so understanding of not who, but what he was, why not invite them home? He really wanted to talk, to open his heart to them, they were so friendly, they smothered him when he cried babbling about the pain, they said they could make it go away, as they offered another shot.

He told them about his second addiction, about Seunghyun, about how much he loved him, to the point when he wanted people to catch them together, because it almost hurt to restrain his passions all the fucking time. He felt good for finally saying that out loud.

“We're all men of passion here.” When he first heard it, he laughed. But not for long.

He was feeling hot, he remembered their faces closer, further, switching. He was sweating, everything seemed so slippery, their hands, his hands on their chests. He wished he'd resisted, but he knew he didn't. Somehow, it all went red in the end, and he cried.


	2. Fingers burnt

Seunghyun knew that his attraction to Jiyong was rooted in the simple fact that he liked playing with fire. It was childish and in the same childish way he disliked burning his fingers, even though he should've seen it coming.

Jiyong was tempting. Jiyong was playful. But Jiyong was forbidden, and Seunghyun would never touch him if Jiyong wasn't playful enough to tempt him himself. It was all romance and sweet words (if they weren't playing kinky and the sweet words turned into swear words, that is). It was liberating to feel all that sweetness in something that the society considered so gross.

Jiyong was delectable, lovable, fuckable, and all the 'able' words that Seunghyun could think of. He could mold himself in any way Seunghyun wanted him. He was fantastic and Seunghyun came to really cherish him. Especially when Jiyong was so obviously falling in love with him.

Every single time they had sex, Jiyong would ask, “Did it feel good?” and Seunghyun would reply, “Better than good. It's always wonderful with you.” Jiyong would smile then and whisper somewhere in the vicinity of his heart, “I'm so happy with you.” It wasn't hard to figure that one out.

Seunghyun liked him far too much to stay on the safe side, which was advisable when you got involved with someone like Jiyong. After the butterflies, there always came the moths. You have to deal with the mundane. With Jiyong, the mundane was more complex than with other people, especially since it was infused with drugs on regular basis.

Before they became lovers, Seunghyun considered that what Jiyong did with his life was his problem. But then their lives became intertwined, and Seunghyun had to reconsider his initial idea. Jiyong's face after he got high wasn't exactly the nicest thing to see, nor were the tiny red speckles on his forearms. And Seunghyun really hated cleaning after his boyfriend's drug sessions. He hated the fear he felt when he thought about the consequences if he hadn't tidied up and the cleaning lady would've come by on that particular day.

Seunghyun decided that it was high time it ended. He talked to Jiyong, very civilly, but Jiyong got angry. This wasn't surprising, if addictions were so easy to deal with, they wouldn't have been called addictions. And they wouldn't lead to death, Seunghyun reflected gloomily.

He believed in simple solutions. If Jiyong wanted for their relationship (of sorts) to continue, he would have to quit drugs. At first, he was pleased because his plan seemed to work. He felt happy that Jiyong treasured him so much that he was determined to succeed. Such strength. Such sacrifice. All for him. Seunghyun felt both flattered and proud.

How wrong he was. Jiyong just wanted to appease him, to shut him up. He didn't change his ways. He was a player who knew all sorts of dirty tricks. He made a spectacle of how much suffering he had to endure, how physically demanding it was to drop it. It was just a show, though, because the first thing Jiyong did when Seunghyun was away working was getting back to old habits.

Seunghyun went to the Taebaek Mountains for movie shooting, which was supposed to last two weeks, but the weather turned out exceptionally good, so they managed to finish ahead of schedule.

Of course he mainly wanted to surprise Jiyong by not telling him of his early return, but there was another reason – he wanted to check on him, to catch him unaware. To see the proof that Jiyong made his choice and he chose Seunghyun.

He arrived in Seoul late in the evening and tried to contact Jiyong, buy the man never picked up his calls. He was either working or partying hard, no harm in that, but Seunghyun was upset. He felt in the mood and he wanted to spend the night at Jiyong's. Well, he could always postpone it until tomorrow. If Jiyong was busy at night, it meant he would sleep in late the next day, so Seunghyun could finally make use of the spare keys he got from him and make a surprise breakfast for his lover.

He got up early, as if he couldn't wait. He realized that he missed Jiyong. For the first time in his life he preferred being with somebody rather than cherishing the rare comfort of solitude. He'd never been lovesick before and he quite liked the feeling now. It was time to admit that he got as serious with Jiyong as Jiyong did with him. They should stop pretending they were just fooling around.

He would've to tell him. Be the first one to take his courage and say, “I love you and I know you love me. Let's make us real. Let's not hide, they'll know sooner or later. I don't care. Let's go through it and take the life that we want.”

He smiled when he imagined saying those words aloud, looking into Jiyong's eyes. He could almost see how wide with excitement they would become.

He entered Jiyong's apartment with the heart full of hope and bags full of breakfast ingredients. Oh. Yesterday Jiyong had a party right _here_. Judging from the mess of bottles and broken stuff, when he woke up, he'd definitely have the hangover of his life. At least he didn't–

Seunghyun stumbled upon something. A syringe. A fucking syringe. There were a few more on the couch. What kind of a cruel joke was it? Right at the time when he decided to confess, Jiyong was doing _that_? He got mad. He wanted to drag Jiyong out of his bed, shake him out of whatever state he had been, and shout, “You destroyed everything!”

Determined, he stepped into the bedroom and he felt sick. The stench of sweat and sex was terrible, but the sight was even worse. Jiyong lied haphazardly splayed on the bed, a dirty sweatshirt barely covering his midsection. He looked almost like a corpse tossed out of the water, maltreated by rocks and fish. If his breathing wasn't so loud, Seunghyun would almost think that he was dead.

He sat on the bed and noted with disgust that the sheets had the unmistakable sticky spots on them. There were also those – and Seunghyun felt numb and hot with anger when he saw them – condoms and tissues. Just how many times did Jiyong – no, he didn't want an answer.

Jiyong groaned and turned to his side. A brown-red stain peered from under his thigh.

It wasn't blood. It couldn't be blood, because if it had been, the implications were too terrifying to consider. With his heart broken and stomach rolling unpleasantly, Seunghyun peeked under Jiyong's sweatshirt.

God. Seunghyun didn't know what would be harder to accept for him – that it was forced, or that Jiyong got so engrossed with somebody that he didn't even notice what was happening. He hated himself for preferring the former option. Nonetheless, he blamed Jiyong. If he didn't go with the flow, if he was in control of things, if he had dropped it as he promised, things wouldn't have come to this.

Jiyong opened his blurry eyes. They seemed so hollow, with no emotions left. They were always like that after he got high. Seunghyun hated that expression.

“What have you done?” he asked, but Jiyong's expression was still blank, so he elaborated, “I get back home a few days earlier, seek you out, and find you completely wasted. I thought you'd promised me something.”

“Seunghyun, I –” Jiyong's voice same out cracked and weak.

“Do you even know what happened? Look at yourself.”

Jiyong did. He noticed the mess between his thighs, he must've felt the discomfort. He started to weep, as he rolled himself into a sorry bundle of limbs. Seunghyun didn't have the strength to be angry anymore, not when Jiyong was so pitiful, and all he felt now was dull resignation.

“Who did that to you?” he asked. “Do you remember?”

Jiyong didn't say anything, he just kept on sobbing. Seunghyun felt scared. Jiyong invited home some random stranger and that man took advantage of him, probably offering some nice chemical concoction in exchange. Seunghyun had to ask.

“Was it forced?” It was almost a hopeful question, but he couldn't help himself.

Jiyong cried harder.

“No... I don't know...” he said finally.

“Great. Simply great,” Seunghyun shook his head, as if that movement could erase yesterday's night. “I should've guessed. The first time you did it with me was after one of your drug sessions, too. Only I stayed with you like a fool, believing it could turn out better some day. But it only gets worse and worse with you, and I told you I wouldn't stand it any longer. If you want to destroy yourself, do it on your own. I quit.”

Jiyong looked at him, his eyes focused at last.

“You don't mean it, tell me you don't.”

“I do. I've had enough of being scared for your sake, when you just don't care.”

“Please don't. I'll change, I'll...”

“No, you won't. I was naïve for long enough. I won't let you hurt me.”

Jiyong didn't stop him in the end, he didn't follow him to the door. He was probably too weak to do that anyway.

Seunghyun didn't see him for the next few days, and when they met at the rehearsals they didn't talk. In fact, for the next two months they didn't say a word to each other. God knew how they managed to do that, because they had to work together, to come on stage together, but they did. On Seunghyun's part, it was an angry silence, and on Jiyong's probably an ashamed one.

So it went, wordlessly. Jiyong's quiet passivity should make it easier for Seunghyun to get over with it. He didn't want to suffer because of somebody who was that irresponsible and destructive for both of them, right? He left and it was final. He couldn't forgive Jiyong for destroying everything on the very day Seunghyun was ready to tell him that –

He decided to enlist half a year earlier than he was due to. He'd come to really hate Jiyong's face.


	3. Child among adults

He wasn't stupid and he knew that Seunghyun hid behind the tanks, guns and barbed wire 'cause he was fed up with him, with the life they led, that he wanted something solid to ground himself. Jiyong knew it all, but he didn't understand how two years of khaki uniformity could be in any way comforting to someone who lived like them, outside SOP of any kind. And Seunghyun, who never coped well with routines and groups, who ran as fast as hell from being institutionalized since he was in kindergarten, that Seunghyun asked the higher-ups to let him join in earlier.

Of course, when Jiyong learned about Seunghyun's enlistment, he went straight to President Yang to protest, insisting that he had big plans for the band. He wasn't listened to.

“You should take Seunghyun's example and show some patriotic spirit. You and Youngbae go there next year, do remember that,” said Yang.

Patriotic spirit, right. As if Jiyong wasn't doing the job already, standing on stage before the nation, fulfilling their wishes of fun and beauty and aesthetic catharsis, to the point of bursting into tears. Why was everybody waiting for him to give more, always more, and how the hell was he going to deal with that pressure, now when he was alone?

Seunghyun knew about all of his fears, and yet–

That was it. He must have done it to punish him, 'cause he knew how scared Jiyong was of the moment when the army would put them in separate cages, one after the other, too soon and for too long. It had to be revenge, what else could it be – for the syringes, for those men – were they four, were they five? And tell me, Jiyong, _was it forced?_ The question lurked in the dark, a hateful open-ending to their relationship. He still wasn't sure, and maybe it was better that way, because what he didn't remember, couldn't hurt that much.

Tough luck that it did. And Seunghyun was not there to fix him. No fixing up, just further fixation for Jiyong. Hoping everyday that when Seunghyun had his day off duty, he would eventually come to him. He never did, but he would, Jiyong was sure of that. They were made for each other, weren't they? He'd seen it in Seunghyun's eyes when he was being made love to, ever so beautifully. Seunghyun was the guy, Jiyong felt it with every nerve of his body, with every cell of his brain.

Ironically, it was him who made a sorry mess of it all. He shouldn't be surprised, he'd been doing the same with the rest of his life, more foolish with each passing year.

But he could still make it better, he was the winning type, everybody said so.

He tried to end the drug thing when Seunghyun wasn't there, but couldn't 'cause Seunghyun wasn't there. The vicious circle was spinning around like crazy, and yet he did what he was good at: he sped it up. He made himself busy with music, sleeping three hours per day and coming up with a ten-song solo album, every and each of them centered upon 'you' rather than 'I', as he used to bend and twist his lyrics before. There was no way Seunghyun didn't get the message.

_I've come to hate mirrors,_   
_ever since you're not reflected by my side_   
_I look for your image in the puddles_   
_remember that street near Namsan?_   
_It was raining then_   
_as it is today_   
_or maybe it's just me crying_   
_maybe_

A critic said, “For once, G-Dragon stopped playing.” He did. He couldn't play alone.

When Jiyong was finished with his work, and still no response from Seunghyun, no damn phone call, he started pushing Youngbae to do the same and create something meaningful before the enlistment.

“At least a mini, a single, a few months and we're gone.”

“You're talking about it as if we're gonna die,” Youngbae laughed.

Wasn't funny, that wasn't funny at all. Jiyong knew he was right after spending a month in the army, no idol squad any longer after the previous scandals, only papers and exercises, the bleakness of barrack mornings, the stench of socks in the evenings, the bluntness of firearms they made him pull apart and pull together, the coarse voices calling him too fucking often, Youngbae forever asking him, “Are you sick?” He was, and the army had effectively cut him from his two favorite anesthetics. How could've he ever thought that whole service thing was a good therapy? He couldn't aim well, his hands all shaky and sweaty. His sergeant was regularly sending him to the doctor, thinking he was going down with a fever. Those visits only made his unit suspect he was faking it.

They gave him funny looks. Suddenly, he was not the coolest living thing on earth. Their eyes said, “You're a whimsical child among adults.”

They were wrong, he was the one who saw it clearly, had the facts right. That entire training, the war-mongering inside their heads, it was like a marching memento, “we're all gonna die.” Nobody seemed to get it, not even Youngbae, who usually understood everything so well. For them, it was all practice, game, tradition, something to brag about to their girlfriends, nothing worth biting their nails at night. For Jiyong, it was as if they were being daily injected with death drive.

It was getting to him too much, that life centered upon destruction. He didn't want to die, not yet. Not until one fine spring afternoon, when Youngbae returned from his weekend off. He was stupidly excited. “Seunghyun must've matured thanks to the uniform. Out for just a few months, and he's already making it official with some girl. You think he's really gonna marry?”

No.

No, Seunghyun, you wouldn't. You won't.


	4. The day they froze

There was a sense of calmness in everything Seunghyun was doing. Not during the first year, that is, when he had a hard time adjusting to the repetitiveness of his new duties, new faces and the new self they demanded from him. God, how he hated morning musters, group meals, common bedrooms and bathrooms. They reminded him of his school days, especially the P.E. classes, when he was fat and it was all embarrassing. He'd always despised undressing in front of people, but at the military unit he was assigned to privacy was a rare luxury. He didn't have space to be alone, nor did he have time to think.

And this was precisely what did the trick. His thoughts couldn't constantly get back to Jiyong, and when they did, all of Seunghyun's problems with him seemed abstract when compared to his life in the army. Nevertheless, it took almost a year of asking himself, “Why the hell did I volunteer to be here sooner than later? Why did I ask for no special treatment?” before he moved to that stage and appreciated the ingenuity of his initial idea. He came to like the routine, the plain clothes and the make-up-less faces of the men surrounding him. Ordinary was good, order was good. He had overrated complexity. Tomboyish jokes with the guys, the evening nagging of their instructor, the attempts to smuggle some alcohol when one of the boys had his birthday – that was real life which was happening outside T.O.P's world, that was what Choi Seunghyun should be doing to stay sane and happy. 

Experiencing all that made him realize how messed up his relationship with Jiyong had been, how destructive an influence it had on both of them. He remembered how they could make a hell of a dancer's job when they thought the other one was flirting with her. Add the drug problem, and Seunghyun was certain that breaking-up was for the best. Life with Jiyong was barely surviving and he wanted a full-fledged existence. He left the army determined to achieve it.

He could steadily work towards his Jiyong-less happiness with no interruptions for more than a year. BIGBANG's activities were limited to Seungri's solo EP, as Jiyong and Youngbae were still half-way through their service. 

Seunghyun wasn't surprised that those two ended up in the same unit. There might not have been any idol squad anymore, but a company such as YG had enough money and influence to ensure special treatment of its stars, the treatment that he himself had refused to partake in. When he thought about Jiyong, however, even before he discovered the quirky ways in which Jiyong bent, he couldn't really picture him adjusting to any other lifestyle than show business. Apparently, neither could president Yang, because he arranged for Youngbae staying close by to keep an eye on their troublesome leader, and cover up for him if necessary. Everybody in the company knew that, even if they didn't say it aloud. Seunghyun heard that just before the enlistment Jiyong was bouncing between hyperactive and apathetic.

“He's freaking out,” Youngbae told him on the phone. “So am I, but he's past the stage of keeping up appearances. You know what he did yesterday? During an interview, he said that he didn't see of what use he could be to the Korean army, that regardless of how much training he took, he'd be the first one dead on the battlefield. Thankfully, it was for a magazine, so the agency could edit it out, but YG went mad. He's scared that Jiyong would do something reckless, so the manager is with him almost twenty-four per seven.”

“Reckless? Like what?”

“Nothing like self-harm to avoid the service, it doesn't seem that way. But everybody knows how good Jiyong is at major insubordinations.”

That was months ago and Seunghyun almost felt tempted to call Jiyong and assure him that it wouldn't be that bad. But every conversation with Jiyong would have ended up with questions whether they could try to be together one more time, so Seunghyun never called him. When Jiyong enlisted, it didn't seem he was having such a hard time as predicted, so Seunghyun felt he could finally let go. Maybe Jiyong found the same kind of peace as he had. He was the winning type, wasn't he?

Seunghyun concentrated on himself. He accepted another movie role, a son returning to his hometown after a few years in the capital. It wasn't a very original scenario, but he liked that type of secretive, scarred characters to which he could relate, especially now. He was in the back-to-basics phase.

There was one more basic principle of life that he faced on the set. A girl from the design section, with a quiet smile on her round face, sharp eyes and low voice, which always made Seunghyun feel warm in her presence. After a month he asked her out and she agreed. She was nice and had her own ideas that kept him intrigued, so he asked her out again, and again. His friends liked her, and his mother wanted to meet her, so he thought that if he wanted faithfulness, honesty and stability, he probably wouldn't find anyone better. 

He was starved for affection. He liked to believe that it was because of his two years in rough male company, but he could also remember Jiyong saying, “Once you get a taste of closeness, not some lovey-dovey dating or sex, but _real_ closeness, you won't stand being alone. I'll teach you.”

He did. He did it well. On one hot August evening (he should've called Jiyong in the morning, or at least text him to wish a happy birthday, why didn't he?), Seunghyun invited his girlfriend home for a very romantic dinner and proposed to her. She said 'yes.' Suddenly everything was happening very fast. Family meetings, arrangements, interviews, fans cheering and weeping. Endless congratulatory phone calls, about which he would forget in five minutes afterwards. 

But for one. The number was restricted.

“Hello?”

Heavy breathing. He could tell who it was just by that, yet he asked, “Jiyong? Is that you?”

“I– I cannot... You sh-should know that...”

“Dear, the dinner is ready,” his girlfriend called from the kitchen and Seunghyun was positive that Jiyong heard her voice, as he stopped mid-sentence and there was more of that labored breathing, now a bit faster.

“Jiyong?”

“I hate you,” whispered Jiyong.

Beep.

In a sense, Seunghyun felt relieved. This would make everything so much easier. If Jiyong hated him, he would finally stop sending out those embarrassing messages.

_Let's meet and talk, they're letting everybody free for 24h on Chuseok. I need to see you._

_If I ran away, would they understand? Would you? If you wouldn't, nobody would. I feel so alone here._

_Are you even reading this, or do you delete all my texts? I can't stand your silence._

_I hate this place, I don't know how I'm going to last for 278 days more. Get me out of here. Or at least pick up the damn phone._

Seunghyun didn't. They broke up, there was nothing to discuss, no reasons to scratch at the wounds.

The messages stopped when his engagement became official and until today he thought Jiyong finally gave up, but that conversation, for the lack of a better word for what was mostly breaths, was just too awkward. And it didn't help that for a brief moment Seunghyun felt sick when Jiyong said those three vicious words.

His anxiety made him insist on an early wedding. If they had the ceremony before the spring of next year, he could avoid Jiyong's troublesome presence, because he'd still be in the army. However, his own fiancée shattered those plans. She phoned, she asked, and in the end managed to arrange the ceremony during the weekend when Jiyong and Youngbae were off duty.

“They are your closest friends, so I thought they'd definitely want to come and see you on this day,” she explained, and he had to put up a happy face. She was very mindful of his moods and he didn't want her to sense his fear, which grew day by day. The awareness that Jiyong would be there was more stressful than the act of marriage itself. It shouldn't be like that, Jiyong shouldn't spoil that day for him. He just that knew something would go wrong.

The big day was a cold one but he was grateful for it, because it cooled him down a bit. His wife-to-be seemed like a fairy-tale creature, hidden within lace and tulle, her face flushed rosy pink and eyes watery from emotions. She seemed so fragile and he thought he could never hurt her, yet he knew that he would because that's what people do to each other. He knew that because there was Jiyong, silently standing with the boys in the queue to congratulate him, staring at him with disbelieving eyes, and it was clear that in that very moment Seunghyun was hurting him. 

Seunghyun realized he'd done it wrong. He should've talked to Jiyong, explain it to him as many times as necessary, so Jiyong would understand and move on. Jiyong must've thought otherwise: those two years of silence were just a punishment, and Seunghyun had avoided him because he was still angry, and if he was angry, he must've had feelings for him. Seeing Jiyong's logic so clearly now, Seunghyun felt sorry for him and angry with himself. His marriage would only worsen their relations. It would be hard to predict Jiyong's behavior from now on. 

Right now, Jiyong seemed to purposefully ignore the bride, who was smiling at him, he never looked at her when he said his greetings. He looked dazed and lost. Pity made Seunghyun let down his guard, and allow Jiyong to hug him. It should've been just a friendly hug, but when Seunghyun patted his back, Jiyong suddenly kissed his neck. It was brief and feather-like, and nobody else noticed it, but it happened. Seunghyun felt anger wash over him. No, it couldn't go on like this. Jiyong had to stop doing that to both of them. He was determined to tell him that, to shake him up enough to snap out of the illusion fueled by too many memories. 

But Jiyong disappeared among the crowd, and people were coming and going around Seunghyun, wanting to wish him all the best or make unfunny jokes about marriage. His bride, his wife, was clinging to his arm, a reassuring weight of stability and happiness to come. There was champagne, which everybody drank excessively, and the air soon became stuffy. Seunghyun felt dizzy, so he went out to catch his breath on the terrace on the upper floor. It was deserted due to the cold, and he was thankful for a moment of solitude. All of a sudden, he was grabbed from behind, and there was a well-known mouth next to his ear.

“I don't care if you're married. If you wanted a cover-up, that's fine. Even if you like her a little, I can deal with that. But don't tell me she's better than me, that you feel the same passion for her as you felt with me,” Jiyong's breath was hot and reeking of alcohol, and his hands were trying to grope all over Seunghyun's chest. “I'll be waiting for you, 'cause I'll never be good with anybody else, and neither will you. I just know it and you don't, not yet, that's why you're doing this.” The hands traveled downwards, across Seunghyun's stomach. “God, I haven't touched you for so long, you feel so warm, you can have me however you–” 

“Stop that,” Seunghyun jerked forward, shaking Jiyong off himself. “It's disgusting, I just got married. What's gotten into you? I remember you saying you hated me.”

Jiyong stomped from one foot to the other, his boldness gone with a steamy puff from his lips. “We both know that's not true. I just hate you marrying her,” he said.

“I don't care if you approve of what I do with my life,” Seunghyun replied angrily. “You didn't care whether I approved of your ways. That's why we broke up. And that was almost three year's ago, in case you haven't registered that.”

“It's different now. I haven't taken anything for more than a year. I'm clean,” Jiyong looked at him hopefully. He really had no clue what was happening, how Seunghyun's world moved and changed, and did not include him anymore.

“Great for you. And?”

“I love you.”

It was the first time Jiyong had said that. Once those words would be very welcome, today they were a nuisance, a ghost of unwanted past. They only infuriated Seunghyun.

“Which part of 'we broke up' didn't you understand? I told you, I don't care anymore. You can do whatever you want, find somebody else,” he replied harshly.

“I thought that if I changed, we could –”

“No, we couldn't. You changed? You didn't, I know you too well. One way or another, you're going to destroy yourself. I'm over thirty, I want a real life, a real partner that can take care of me. I want to be with someone who lasts. And you, you're just a tiring mess. You need a babysitter or a masochist, and I'm neither.”

Jiyong bit his lip. Seunghyun was purposefully insulting to discourage him, they both knew that. They also knew he wouldn't give up easily.

“You didn't always think like that. You were happy with me, your eyes were so bright whenever we were on our own. You loved me, right?” Jiyong's voice was almost pleading.

“I did, but it was a long time ago. Now I love somebody else,” Seunghyun was becoming impatient. This conversation was leading nowhere. It would always be like that, why did he even bother with explanations? He no longer felt guilty for ignoring Jiyong all that time.

But Jiyong still had his ultimate strategy, which he decided to use now.

“I could be a good destroyer that you say I am, and spoil it all for you, you know. I could tell her what you did with me. I could tell everybody.”

Seunghyun anticipated it. It was a desperate strategy, a suicidal one, their careers and friends lost, their families compromised for years. In fact, Jiyong would be the one risking the most, but there was a slim chance that he'd do it.

“Did you really fall so low to go for such a petty revenge? I won't be with you, married or divorced,” Seunghyun stated calmly, although he was panicking inside. Jiyong noticed it, however, and he was observing him with evident satisfaction. Seunghyun already thought that he lost, that Jiyong would do it.

But then Jiyong did something utterly surprising. His expression softened and he stepped closer, too close. He gently brushed his fingers over Seunghyun's cheek.

“I could do it, I don't care what people think anymore, but I won't, so don't worry. I'm not like you. I love you too much to hurt you. I'd rather die,” he said softly, and he even smiled faintly, but Seunghyun sensed something ominous in his confession.

Jiyong stepped back, ready to take his leave from the freezing terrace, and Seunghyun could almost see that ominous something creeping behind him, climbing up his back, crouching on his shoulders and weighing him down, dark and winking at Seunghyun with a smile of a devil. He felt scared.

“Jiyong,” he called and Jiyong stopped, turning his head to him, his eyes hopeful again.

“Don't do anything stupid,” Seunghyun told him. Hope disappeared from those always-bright eyes, and the arms hunched even lower.

“But you said I could do whatever I want, right?” Jiyong replied, and Seunghyun couldn't say anything other than a lie that he wanted to be true.

“Yeah, right, I don't care.”

Yeah, right. Anything, just get on with your life, Jiyong. Let's don't care together and it'll be alright.


	5. Lopsided loop

Hope was the worst. Seunghyun got married and didn't care. That was reality. He could still change his mind. That was hope. It kept him awake at night, it kept him alert whenever the net supplied him with photos of lonesome and pensive Seunghyun with headlines such as _Choi Seunghyun alone in a restaurant: marriage in crisis?_ Hope made him cry at night when he was touching himself after lights out, 'cause he could only ever finish thinking about Seunghyun, and it was bad. No “I don't want to move on,” not anymore. Now it was “I can't move on.” One day, it could become “I've never moved on.”

“Keep on marching, no slacking off!” 

Jiyong kept up his pace. He despised the drills, they exhausted him physically and mentally. Now it was even harder. Youngbae was down with fever and they'd been keeping him in the hospital for three days. Jiyong couldn't really talk to the other guys, he didn't know what about, and they thought he didn't want to 'cause he looked down on them. Maybe he did. He thought they could never understand him. Maybe they couldn't.

Only Seunghyun could. Or could he now, when he did something so incomprehensible as marriage? He, who said might consider marriage after he got forty?

“Ten-minute break!”

Great. Jiyong could sit on the ground, be lonely, and do nothing. What can you do in ten minutes in an open field with dozens of guys who don't really like you? Check your shoelaces? That was what he ended up doing. It was hot, the sun was burning his naked neck to the point he wanted to scratch his skin off. 

“Hey, Kwon.”

He looked up. One of the guys called Lee was standing in front of him with a wide grin on his face. He was younger than Jiyong, smug, sociable and self-confident, an opposite of his current self. He was popular in the unit, but Jiyong couldn't get to like him. He was too bold, too easy-going, his laughter in the evenings was too loud, like the screeching of a fingernail on glass. There was something wrong in the way he looked at people. As if he was looking at a game board.

“Yo, Lee,” he replied with no enthusiasm and concentrated on his shoes again. He didn't want to talk to this man, he'd rather talk to his shoelaces, but Lee didn't get the hint.

“Your friend still sick?” 

“Yeah.”

Lee sat next to him. They both stared at their corporal reprimanding somebody for taking off his jacket. It was hot but he couldn't take it off. Jiyong felt utter hopelessness. 

“You like it here?” Lee asked out of the blue.

“It doesn't matter. That's where I have to be,” Jiyong was making circles in the dust with his boot. A closed circle, a loop. No exit. 

“I'm the same. The routine drives you brainless. When that fool of a corporal says 'left, right, left, right', I feel like I'm gonna choke,” Lee gave him a sympathetic smile. “Luckily, there are ways to unwind. Those that help you grow wings and fly high, if you know what I mean. They'd make your life here so much more bearable. I could give you some.”

Jiyong blinked. He knew what Lee meant. The right person at the right time, or the wrong person at the wrong time, which was it now? It was too sudden, too straightforward. Be careful.

“Why are you telling me this? You think I'd be interested?” he asked cautiously.

“You _are_ already. I could tell by looking at your face on the very first day, I can tell now. It's visible after a few years, especially if you liked something more than weed. I just knew you'd want it, being trapped in here with all those guys who just don't understand. You're lucky that I can help you out.”

Just a hint, that's all Jiyong's mind needed to produce a very specific sort of aching in his veins. The body had undergone a very brutal kind of detox, more a deprivation than anything else, and even after a year it still remembered that it could feel light, and graceful, and beautiful. The only other times when he felt so wonderful were when he was with Seunghyun.

He would give anything to feel as if he were with Seunghyun again.

Just once.

“What do you have and how much would I owe you?” he asked.

“Just the weed, everything else is too risky to smuggle in here. The price... let's say that it's no fun to get high alone.”

Be careful, Lee is a player. He would want something. Everything has a price. But a bankrupt is always thrifty when he thinks he has nothing more too lose.

“Do you have some place safe to do it?”

“Let's meet at half past ten, behind our barrack,” Lee got up. The break was coming to an end and everybody was getting back to form a clumsy column. But Jiyong had one more question before he trusted somebody so clearly untrustworthy.

“Lee?" 

“What?”

“Why didn't you approach me earlier, if you thought I'd be interested from day one?” 

“Your friend. I don't think we can trust him in that respect, can we? So I had to wait until he moved out of the picture for a while. Don't tell anybody about our little arrangement.” 

“Of course. I'm not stupid.”

To the contrary, he was. It was too risky, the place, the stuff, the guy he barely knew. But for a few hours the world would have colors that went down the drain on Seunghyun's wedding day. For a few hours that day wouldn't have happened. 

Lee led him to the Old Showers, a building abandoned twenty years ago, when recruits had to go out to wash themselves, winter or no winter. Luckily, nobody used it now, a blissfully silent white hall of crushed tiles. 

The first puff was good, the second even better. Only now did he realize that he'd been in constant pain, and now it was gone. Seunghyun was in front of him, his hand outstretched, and he touched it with his own, and they had identical bands of white gold on their ring fingers... Too soon. It had all ended too soon. He was back in the reality he hated.

_T.O.P: London Honeymoon_

_They_ were supposed to go there, he had been planning that trip after Seunghyun finished the movie in the mountains, three years ago. 

This time it was him who sought Lee out.

“Help me. I need a fix.” 

Lee only smiled and there they were, in the Old Showers again, Jiyong waiting for a joint that the man was rolling between his fingers. But Lee ignored his outstretched hand and took a puff himself. He smirked at Jiyong's bewildered expression.

“You didn't expect it'd be always free of charge?”

“How much?” 

“I'm not talking about money. I've more... pressing needs,” Lee's suddenly heavy hand grounded his shoulder, slowly getting down his arm. Jiyong shivered. Be careful. But the smoke tickled his senses so damn good...

“You know, Kwon, being locked up in here for two years, there are hardly any chances to get laid. You wouldn't mind that, would you? The way you are.” 

Jiyong felt cold sweat trickling down his spine. How did Lee know?

“I don't– ”

“You do, don't pretend. I even thought you and that Dong guy were set, but you've just repeated some other guy's name five times when we got high. Bad luck, two years in here when you want somebody that much... A man has his needs. So what do you say? One fix, one fuck.”

No hesitation, no shame in his words. Lee planned it. That was his price and he was careful to give it after Jiyong got the taste of the only medicine that worked.

“What do you say, Kwon?”

Don't do anything stupid. 

Do whatever you want.

“Do whatever you want, Lee.” 

The man laughed.

“We're slaves of our passions, the two of us.”

No, there was no 'two', not with Lee, there was Jiyong and no Seunghyun, and just another body that was rushing things a bit, and Jiyong had to guide him if he were to get any pleasure at all from that. The drug helped him to diffuse the tension, chase away the nagging thought, _It's not right, I'm not like that_.

Push and pull, warmth, feel that. It's just a body, a toy. Don't think. 

It all went for naught, because when he was close and could almost forget about the entire world, Lee panted, “Want to know how I knew you'd agree for this? We've met before, some years ago. You invited me and my friends home, remember?”

All muscles tied into painful knots, and Lee groaned and came. Jiyong's tears fell on the cold white tiles underneath his feet. 

He promised himself he wouldn't do it again, not with that man. He did. So much for promises. After the initial fail, Jiyong retreated into passiveness. He was a doll, he did not enjoy, but not suffered either. Three, four, five times. Youngbae got suspicious, and they had to plan their sessions with surgical precision. Drug-infused minds are sloppy, however.

It was dawn time, the sun painted the tiles red. The breaths came out in little white clouds, like marijuana smoke minutes, ages ago, before he had to undress. Lee was holding him, kissing his shoulder, but Jiyong felt cold.

Suddenly, they heard the door opening, and Lee was pushing him away, in his rush making him slip on the floor. Jiyong raised his head and saw the surprised faces of his corporal and a young patrolman. Finally – 

“What's the meaning of this?!”

“I'm so sorry, he gave me marijuana and seduced me,” said Lee pleadingly. Then he covered his face, as if in shame, and started to cry. All pretended. He must've rehearsed that scenario, and had no scruples about acting it out. To think just a moment ago he was whispering dirty sweet nothings into his ear. Jiyong realized Lee wasn't just a player, it was no game he offered. He was a devil and he made pacts. He always had the upper hand. Three years ago and now.

A word of mouth, it was all that was needed. It didn't matter that YG meddled with the investigation, and in the end it was Lee who got the dishonorable discharge from the army and the gay scandal never reached the spotlight. _He gave me. He seduced me._ Everybody liked Lee, it was Jiyong who was the army oddball, the scandalizing celebrity who did photo shoots in skirts and advertised red lipsticks. He made a pact with the devil and the remaining two months of service were hell. Even Youngbae didn't want to talk to him for a month. The recruits, the brass, they all believed Lee and they all gossiped. They would all gossip when they got home to their wives and friends. Kwon Jiyong, he likes it in the ass. G-Dragon, the degenerate. 

The world into which he re-emerged after the discharge looked at him with slanted eyes. Nobody was sure about the facts, but they had their opinions. He didn't know what to do to get back the lost credibility. He could never deal well with mass criticism. He wanted to close himself in the recording studio, but president Yang said to wait. The agency would have to see if there could be a good reception for BIGBANG with such a leader. _Such_ _a_ _leader_. They thought he didn't cut up for the role anymore. That hurt. He didn't want to lose BIGBANG, he put so much effort in it.

He didn't want to lose BIGBANG. By now, it was his only connection with Seunghyun.


	6. Broken band

“BIGBANG with another leader? Are you out of your mind, all of you?”

Seunghyun's eyes made angry travels from one face to another. He'd had a bad feeling about this meeting. It was supposed to be 'confidential' and its subject matter was 'the band's current difficulties.' You could've thought they would discuss Jiyong's problems and how to help, but instead the president wanted to discuss Jiyong as the problem that should be dealt with.

He invited just the four of them, asked if they were aware of the situation. They had forced the story out of Youngbae. Jiyong was caught red-handed, both with drugs and another man. Seriously, what were the odds for something like that? His two biggest secrets exposed in one go, how could somebody be so careless and so unlucky? Seunghyun didn't have the heart to be angry at him for– _whatever_. He was too pitiful.

Seunghyun didn't have the chance to meet Jiyong after his discharge, and he was afraid of who he might have turned into. He knew best how collapsible a construction Jiyong was. The awareness that he had left him in the worst possible moment didn't make Seunghyun feel any better.

Maybe that was why he fought so valiantly when president Yang proposed the change of BIGBANG's leader.

“Jiyong isn't some sort of artificial facade here, he is the core. What do you want to do, put Seungri in his place? Get a new face, one of those guys that try to imitate him, but have no compromising weaknesses? And you think the same, guys?” he looked accusingly at Youngbae, Daesung and little Seunghyun. “Just because he is what he is you want to replace him? I'll quit if you do that to him. ”

“Would you rather disband than have somebody else instead of him? There might be no other option, if the moods of the public don't change any time soon, and it doesn't seem like it. Do you want to suffer the consequences of his actions along with him?” warned the president, annoyed with Seunghyun's blunt reproach.

“Yes. If there's anybody I owe that, it's him,” Seunghyun said firmly. It was probably the most pretentious thing he'd ever said, but it felt right to put it like this, in front all of them. He didn't expect that feeling and it scared him.

“Seunghyun is right, Mr. Yang,” said Daesung, his voice shy and quiet as always when he was serious. “BIGBANG lasts because we are a good team. If one left, it'd become kind of artificial, pretending it's the same group. And without Jiyong, we simply loose our music. In the last few years, it was him who wrote and produced the most of it. We put too much on his shoulders, we all knew about the drug thing, but we ignored it because we needed him working, whatever the cost. We could've done something, but there never was time. Nobody ever had time to work it through with him. He didn't even felt comfortable enough with any of us to tell about... that other thing.”

Seunghyun didn't say a word about his very personal knowledge of 'that other thing,' nor about his meager attempts at 'working it through' with Jiyong, naturally. But Deasung's words made him realize that all this time he'd been ashamed. Ashamed that he had failed.

“Maybe some mistakes were made during his upbringing here,” admitted president Yang, and this was as self-critical as the agency's head could get. “I'm sorry, boys, your loyalty to him is admirable, but you leave me no choice. I'll temporarily suspend the band's activities. Then... we'll see. You four have a go for solo projects in Japan. The scandal wasn't as resonant there. Dismissed.”

They left the office in silence. What could they say, really? That they went through worse? For Jiyong, the situation had never been so detrimental, and he was the crucial factor here. However hard the four of them tried, and he didn't cope, they would never be reactivated again, that was clear to all of them. And even if Jiyong did cope, in those few weeks he'd already become infamous enough to make their comeback a matter of years rather than months. Most probably, that was the end.

With such uneasy thoughts, each of them was about to slip into his own and, from now on, separate world with a voiceless nod for goodbye, when they suddenly collided with Jiyong.

A few seconds, and Seunghyun knew that the discomfort he had felt around Jiyong after they broke up didn't lessen a bit. To the contrary, it grew. Maybe it was the conversation they'd just had with president Yang that caused it. Maybe it was the unpleasant feeling in his gut each time his mind produced the images of Jiyong with that man, whose full-face photos weren't supposed to be in the net, but somehow were, and Seunghyun remembered his face, even though he didn't want to. Or maybe, quite simply, it was the sadness that emanated from Jiyong, dressed black from head to toe, with his hair still very short and in its natural color after his service. He looked as if he was about to attend a funeral. In a way, he was if he came here to talk to the president, though he didn't know that yet.

A rotten cherry on top of an equally rotten cake for Jiyong. Seunghyun felt that something was terribly wrong with this world to work like that.

Jiyong looked at them, saw their uneasy expression, eyes casted down, and understood.

“So I guess that's it,” he said. “The president didn't answer my calls, so I came to talk to him in person, maybe negotiate something for us, but it's no use, right? I screwed up. I knew how responsible a position I had in the band, but that entire army business got to me too much, I just lost control and– I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.”

“We just have to start something new. We can, all four of us, I mean _five_ –” little Seunghyun tried to sound casual, but his voice came out broken and forced, and of course Jiyong noticed his slip-of-the-tongue.

“It's good that you can. It would be unfair if just because of me you couldn't be as successful as you deserve,” he tried to smile but failed. “Still– I know it's kind of pathetic to ask you, but maybe I could treat you to something? You know, since we won't have any final act... If you want to, that is.”

Well, that was unexpected. After Jiyong's over-emotional texts to him, Seunghyun thought he would protest, cry, or be rendered voiceless for once after he got the news. And look at him now. Such class. Such self-control. Such strength. A living mystery that nobody could solve.

They must've all been taken aback by Jiyong's words, because nobody answered him, which he took for a bad coin.

“Or maybe in your situation, when you still have a chance with the public, it's not a good idea to go out with me. With my reputation...” he added. His eyes blinked rapidly and his voice sounded weaker. So Seunghyun was wrong about strength and right about crying, Jiyong was on the verge of breaking. He was just doing his best for their sake, today as always, for the last time. Seunghyun admired him for that.

“Why not? Let's go,” he replied, not caring whether the others wanted to decline or accept Jiyong's invitation. They should at least do that much for him. He should do that.

They ended up in one of the backyard bars with beer and cheap food, the sort of they went to before their debut, when they didn't have much money. At that hour, the rest of the clientèle was well beyond the age when they cared for boy bands, so they had a certain amount of privacy. Not that they talked about anything that required it. Small talk, trivia, nothing about BIGBANG, nothing that could bring back memories and make it painful.

Of course, there were topics that hurt only those who knew.

“Sooooo, Seunghyun, are you working on your mini-version? You sorta closed yourself at home after you got married,” little Seunghyun patted Seunghyun's back. He was drinking far too much for the early hour, as they all did. They were trying to kill their grief and so far none had succeeded.

“There won't be any mini-version. We discussed it when we got engaged,” Seunghyun replied. He found it difficult to discuss his family matters in front of Jiyong. He felt as if Jiyong's eyes bored into him.

“Oh? When I met your wife, I thought she'd make a good mother,” remarked their youngest.

“I'm sure she would. But not with me. Kids are not my thing.”

“Yeah, he's not a babysitter,” interjected Jiyong, looking Seunghyun straight in the eye. It was cold suddenly, like on that terrace they talked last time. _Why are you still there_ , thought Seunghyun, _why can't you let me go?_

It struck him suddenly. He saw Jiyong once again with that man, and for the first time the drug-phased face wasn't obscenely dipped in pleasure but in hopelessness, because he'd just realized he'd made a wrong decision again and the replacement didn't work.

Seunghyun felt like crying. He excused himself and went out to calm himself with a cigarette He didn't menage to lit it up, when Jiyong joined him. He knew it. Jiyong would use any opportunity to be alone with him.

“That comment was unnecessary. If you've been trying to make me feel guilty, it worked,” Seunghyun said. “But that's all. No other feelings.”

“I'm sorry,” replied Jiyong. He was quiet for a while, and then – “I'm so happy to finally see you, you don't know how– ”

“Stop that, Jiyong. Stop doing this to yourself. It's been four years.”

“You think I don't know? You think I didn't try?”

“Oh yeah, everybody's seen your attempts. And you told me you were clean, you liar,” Seunghyun couldn't help getting worked up, especially when the alcohol was helping. “On top of that, sleeping with some junk who you don't really know, just what were you thinking?”

Jiyong looked at him carefully, with hope that had always made Seunghyun feel troubled.

“Does it bother you? Me being with somebody else?” he asked.

Seunghyun understood his meaning.

“It's your stupidity that bothers me. I'm not jealous, if that's what you were waiting to hear.” He wasn't jealous, he was only fucking pissed at that Lee guy, because Jiyong deserved so much better. That wasn't the same as jealousy, was it? “I'm happy as I am now,” he added, not certain who he was trying to assure.

“Well, I'm not. And it seems it's going to stay this way. Maybe it's some kind of God's ill-willed balance and there's nothing I can do anymore.”

A mystery that nobody could solve. Seunghyun gave up before he really tried.

After that drunken parody of a final act, Seunghyun got glimpses of Jiyong rather than actually sew him. It was to be expected, after they got suspended as a band. They could of course meet in private, and that's what they did during parties. But Jiyong quite quickly stopped coming to them. He must've felt that his presence made people feel awkward. Some were openly cautious when talking to him. And they were supposed to be his friends, thought Seunghyun with bitterness that started to grow in him day by day. He also stopped coming to parties soon after Jiyong did. He was fed up with socializing anyway.

Without the band to keep him in check, he slowly retreated from show business and tried his talent as an interior designer, the plan he had been wanting to realize for a few years. He wasn't very successful yet. Only his wife cheered on him. Somehow, her faith in him wasn't enough anymore.

As for Jiyong, he seemed to have no plan B for himself. He asked anybody who'd listen to him to be included in any project, as long as it involved music. In a span of a year, two artists agreed, but the criticism they received was such that nobody else dared to work with him afterwards.

Jiyong had become a persona non grata in the places where everybody would lick his shoes two years ago, so he found himself a new company, consisting of people who had no reputation to lose by hanging out with him. Initially, there were compromising photos from those outings, with headlines such as _G-Drug-on_ or _He lost it again_ , but they finally became too frequent to be circled around even by the most gruesome tabloids.

Seunghyun was getting more and more irritable and nervous as the photos appeared, but he became even worse when they disappeared. Not knowing was scarier than any truth.

He could sense his wife was becoming wary of him. She tried to talk to him, but he couldn't. Apparently at loss as to what to do with her husband, she went out to meet up with her girlfriends more often. He didn't mind. He preferred being on his own.

But inactivity and solitude lead to strange results. Look at Jiyong, sinking deeper and deeper, nobody around that could help him. No, his thoughts shouldn't always end with Jiyong, he'd been happily married for three years now, he shouldn't be preoccupied with someone's life so much, it wasn't normal.

“What is so good about normal? It doesn't even exist,” Jiyong said when he was undressing the slightly awkward Seunghyun for the first time.

He really should stop that, analyzing the good times and the bad times, telling right from wrong, or he might soon end up with one conclusion that he wanted to avoid at all costs: he could have solved that mystery. He really could have, once. At times, he even thought he should have.


	7. Dogged

The party ended, people came, people went, and he was mostly gone, too. He fell smoothly into the softness, his eyes closed, but there were other eyes, dozens of them, on one face with one lip-less mouth. He was scared and couldn't move as he lied down, unable to protect himself in any way.

The eye man neatly folded Jiyong's arms on his chest and caressed his hair. Then he bowed down, their faces now very close, as if to kiss him, but instead he bit into Jiyong's lip and chewed on it. Then he proceeded downwards, the gore mockery of love bites continuing, until he found Jiyong's stomach and opened it. He started to eat out his bowels as if they were spaghetti.

Jiyong woke up, all shaky and sweaty. The same dream again. He wished he could quit sleeping. It offered no rest anymore.

He stumbled upon something, when he tried to get up from his bed. Wait, it was not his bed, it was the couch. He stopped sleeping on the bed, there was a pile of dirty clothes there and– no, no, no, it was bad, very bad. He shouldn't be remembering that, he needed to forget it, all of it.

The paws were already stiff when his sister untangled Jolie from his sweatshirt. 

“When Gaho died two years ago, you insisted on taking her back from mom and dad's to take care of her on your own, and look what you've done. God knows when was the last time you took her for a good walk, judging from the mess here. And now... you starved her. You monster.”

“I... I've fed her.”

“When?”

He couldn't recall.

“You know, as your sister I shouldn't be saying this, or maybe in fact I should, precisely because I _am_ your sister, but the way you live now – just what for?”

It was a week ago. Or a month ago. Probably. Time was relative. It felt as if he hadn't left the apartment for weeks. He must've gone out, though, 'cause he was still hearing the soft murmur of the medicine inside his body, delicately stroking the inside of his veins. Thanks to it, he didn't cry when Dami took away the little corpse.

She was right. Jolie, who lived up to her name and welcomed every day with vivid swagging of her tail, was dead, while he, who could barely wake up around noon, was clinging to life, and just what for?

Indeed, what was he getting up for now? The sharp pain made him check out what he'd just crashed into and he found his reason. His favorite photo of Seunghyun, taken just after he'd woken up (and it was in this very apartment, in this very bed in which he could no longer sleep, 'cause it had become a coffin), was lying under his feet, its glass frame broken. The tiny shards cut into his skin and thick red droplets fell on the most beautiful face in the world. He panicked, he tried to swipe it off with his elbow, but there was still crushed glass on it, and he he hissed in pain again, and now the photo was even more dirty, and Jiyong didn't know if he should sacrifice his t-shirt for Seunghyun, or for himself.

He kept sitting, blood kept trickling, and Seunghyun on the photo kept smiling.

“Why do you look so happy when I'm hurt?” he asked. “I'm all alone here, waiting for you. When will you come? I miss you.”

The Seunghyun on the photo was silent, but his smile was so warm, and it was a smile that had been dedicated exclusively for Jiyong and because of him, so he kept talking.

“I'm not feeling well. I can't eat, I live on soft drinks... I have nightmares all the time, really bad ones, so I'm trying not to sleep... And there is this rash on my forearms, those tiny red speckles look really ugly. I think I'm ugly all over now... You were right, I should've dropped it a long time ago. But if you come back now, I feel I can still do it.”

He fell silent and listened, almost expecting the knocking on his door. It didn't came. 

“I killed my dog. I didn't mean to, but I did. Even my sister hates me now. You're the only one I have,” he pleaded. “I need you so much right now. When will you be back?”

He wanted to call Seunghyun and ask him directly, but the number couldn't be reached. He recalled that Seunghyun had told him some time ago that he'd change his number if Jiyong kept pestering him. He must've finally done it.

Just how many years had it been already? Two years, then another two years of his army failure, then the hell broke lose, swallowing him and chewing all of his bones, bit by bit... It was so difficult to count, his head started to hurt... Four years since Seunghyun's wedding... Eight? Had it been eight years already? His lucky number and still nothing?

Then the strangest thought struck him, and he felt like a hopeless, pathetic fool for not considering it before, not for real.

Seunghyun would never come back to him.

No, he would, he had to.

Jiyong dealt with many shattered dreams, many disappointments which he had learned to be prepared for. Lost career, broken friendships, unrequited loves. But not this one. This was too perfect to end. It was the only thing Jiyong believed in. If it was over, there was no point in anything else any longer.

He looked at his bloodied elbow. It could end here. Simple.

But what if Seunghyun – 

No, those doubts would drive him crazy. Don't think. Forget. Forget everything. Jolie. Lee. Seunghyun. 

No, not him.

Once more, he got up. He cleaned himself. He cleaned the photo, placed it in the center of the coffee table and sat in front of it. Seunghyun smiled at him. He smiled at Seunghyun.

He felt dead all over, but not when he thought about Seunghyun.

His passion was like drugs. It kept him alive, but it came to the point when he realized might have been better off dead.


	8. Impossible, possible

Pity. That was why he was in front of that door again. Plus they used to be good friends. Plus Youngbae talked him into it.

It had been a long time since he got in touch with somebody from the band, everybody so busy with their lives, the three of them still juggling with music and stardom, while he was trying to stay away from it. He supposed that for them he led a boring existence, so he was surprised when Youngbae called him and said they should meet.

“We need to talk about Jiyong,” he clarified.

Of course. Of course it couldn't be about some normal stuff like problems of being a father or running a dance academy, which were Youngbae's latest achievements. It had to be about Jiyong.

They met in a café on the top floor of the building where the dance school was located. Youngbae didn't change that much, he had an outlook similar to his BIGBANG days. Well, he was still in the business, unlike Seunghyun.

“Long time no see,” he said. “How's your wife?”

“Fine,” replied Seunghyun. That wasn't entirely true. In fact, it was entirely false. His wife was sad and it was his fault. They were rarely at home together, and when they were both free, he mostly took her to the cinema to avoid talking. She sensed something was wrong with him, but how could he tell her about the past guilt that was eating him up? Even if she accepted his past, she wouldn't have understood.

“How are you?” he changed the topic. “Coping well with being a daddy?”

“I guess so, but since he sleeps most of the time, my girlfriend takes care of more challenging tasks, 'cause I'm not at home far too often,” Youngbae smiled, but his expression soon turned into a serious one. “I thought about inviting you all, you know, to show him off. It's been a long time, too long. We were once a good team. I've missed us together. But– ”

“But there's a problem with Jiyong. I mean, yet another problem with Jiyong,” supplied Seunghyun. Not to mention his own problems with Jiyong, the night-time phone calls that continued until he changed his number, but Youngbae wouldn't know about _that,_ thank God.

“Yeah,” Youngbae nodded. “Maybe sitting at the crib gets to me, 'cause recently I've been thinking about how much my life's changed. So have yours. You live in the peaceful world of beautiful objects, as you wanted to, even when we were still a band. Daesung, that shy guy, he's gone so far with his voice and means of expression, everybody wants to write for him. Little Seunghyun is busy doing what he's best at, that is everything, from emceeing to headhunting for YG. I think he has an ambition to find somebody who could fill the void left after Jiyong's departure... But Jiyong himself, he hasn't moved a step from where he was four years ago. He didn't even try that much, he got stuck in that drug shit and stopped doing anything else. Some say it was the army, others blame drugs, there are those who say he didn't cope with his orientation, too... Frankly speaking, I don't give a shit about the causes, the point is where it got him. He was one of the most gifted guys in this country, everybody respected him, and now he's a sight too sorry even for tabloids,” Youngbae nervously rotated the cup of coffee in his hands. “I think it's unfair, Seunghyun, it makes me angry that people act as if he didn't exist anymore. But we're also at fault here, the four of us. We're not any better than a few years ago. We've neglected him when he needed help. And now it might be too late.”

“What do you mean?” Seunghyun's heart started to beat too fast for his comfort.

“I told you, I wanted to get the five of us together. I keep in touch with Daesung and Seunghyun, but I've been trying to contact Jiyong for some time now and I cannot reach him. His cell phone is dead, he doesn't answer the land line either. I talked to his family, but they seem to have cut off from him recently, even his sister lost her patience finally. I tried at his so-called party friends, but they are all good-for-nothings, they don't care because he's no fun anymore, they told me. Finally, I went to his house, but he wouldn't open the door. I know he was there, I heard him moving around the apartment.”

“Maybe he just wants to be alone.”

Youngbae looked at him as if he'd just said a very bad joke.

“You know he hates that the most. No, Seunghyun, it's something else. I had a bad feeling when I was standing at his door. I couldn't stop thinking that the next time I went there, I wouldn't hear any movement. He would be gone. I don't know what to do.”

Seunghyun, however, knew exactly what could and should be done. He was playing with the thought of overlooking it, but then he would've never forgiven himself. Not that he could already.

“I have a spare key to his apartment. I can check up on him.” There. He said that.

Youngbae blinked.

“What? So instead of wasting my time trying to extract some information from the likes of that Lee guy, I could've just asked you straightaway. How come you even have it?”

 _Come whenever you want. Come whenever you can. Please._ The key was put in the back-pocket of his trousers and he let Jiyong's hand stay there for a while.

“I– when we still partied together, he gave it to me in case he lost his own.” The lie sounded rather smooth, but Seunghyun hoped that the heat that flooded his cheeks didn't become visible.

Youngbae was looking at him quizzically.

“Oh, I see... So that was why.”

“Of course, what did you think?”

“You know, there is another reason why I wanted to talk to you in particular. It's pretty awkward, though... I don't want to offend you, but–” Youngbae paused and his face turned bright red. “I think he... liked you.”

“What are you insinuating?” Seunghyun's heart was pounding madly now. That was his secret. Their secret. Nobody was supposed to know.

“Nothing, nothing on your part,” Youngbae assured him. “It's just him. I understood only after the scandal in the army. The way he behaved at your wedding, not speaking a single word to anybody, or how detached he'd become and what he did afterwards... I think he felt hurt, but he couldn't let anybody know and it became too much.”

Seunghyun knew it full well. Youngbae shouldn't be dragging that out now, after such a long time. It was not his business.

“So what if he liked me? What does it have to do with the current situation? Should I offer to go to bed with him to make him feel better or what? Whatever he felt, it's not my fault,” he said.

 _Of course you're important to me, Ji, don't ever doubt that. You're special. One of a kind._ Broken promises. Words turned into lies.

Youngbae patted his back.

“Of course it's not your fault, don't be stupid. Just check up on him, that's all I ask. Get the general picture and let me know if there's any way in which we could help him. If I'm guessing right, and he liked you that much, he will listen if you reason with him. He always did.”

“It's been four years. Even if he fancied me then, everything might have changed.”

“Maybe. But he never asked you to give him back that key, did he?”

Now, in front of that door, the said key was already slippery with sweat, as Seunghyun weighed it in his hand. He didn't want to use it. Eight years ago, he promised himself that he wouldn't be the one standing here in that very moment. Another broken promise.

Click, click.

Sick. It smelled as if a sick person lived here and never left this apartment. Or rather, this ruin, because everything here gave off that aura. The air, the dust, the dirt on the long-forgotten glasses on the coffee table – all was immobile. Including Jiyong. He was sitting on the floor next to the terrace door, his side pressed to the glass. He was hugging his knees tightly.

He was alive. Still. And it mattered a lot. Seunghyun felt light-headed. He was suddenly very aware of how scared he'd been until that moment.

Jiyong turned his head to him. His eyes almost lit up. Almost. There was not enough life in them for that, not any longer.

“You came back. I knew it,” he said in a hoarse voice, as if he hadn't used it for days.

“I didn't 'come back', I just came to check up on you,” Seunghyun replied.

“You came back...” Jiyong smiled weakly. There was no point in arguing with him now, not in the state he was. When the initial euphoria of finding him in one living piece passed, Seunghyun noticed the matted strands of receding, greasy hair and the dirty clothes that hung loosely on the bones that poked Jiyong's skin from beneath.

Come and see, Seunghyun! Conflicted, diseased, famished – and there could still came the fourth, the worst one, and hell would follow you if it did... A very private apocalypse. He shivered.

Jiyong moved unsteadily, but it seemed he couldn't get up and greet him, so Seunghyun crouched next to him. He wrinkled his nose. Jiyong needed a shower. Or two, in a row. Yes. Practical possibilities, those were the things Seunghyun should concentrate on. Not Jiyong's impossible delusions. And if Jiyong's one bony-skinny hand was gripping on his sleeve and the other bony-skinny hand, with nails bitten to the point of bleeding, was trying to brush his cheek but missed, he shouldn't be thinking, 'Poor Jiyongie. You don't have the strength to touch me like you used to, even if I let you.'

The hand might have missed, but Jiyong was leaning in closer and closer...

Seunghyun felt nauseous. The sickly smell was getting to him. It became crucial to make it disappear, to wash it off Jiyong, to cleanse, maybe to burn this place down and sterilize it, and only then put Jiyong in the newly-acquired space of white walls and soft textures, lock it up so that nothing could harm him and he could get nothing harmful for himself – and then Seunghyun could finally leave him for good.

Unfortunately, such perfect solutions were usually the impossible ones, so he ended up saying, “Get up, you’re going to take a shower.”

Jiyong getting up (how long had he been sitting like that? Hours? Days?) and reaching bathroom was a lengthy process that required Seunghyun’s help. It took Seunghyun equally long to find a clean towel among the rubble and dust of Jiyong’s last few years in here.

He left Jiyong when he made sure he'd be able to stand and undress on his own. Now he could inspect the place. He checked the most obvious hiding places, then the ones in which he himself would've stacked a handy drug supply, finally all the nooks and crooks of furniture. Eventually, he found the necessary equipment and a measle amount of heroine in the nightstand. Such carelessness. Jiyong didn't bother to hide it well. He must've thought he had no reason to, nobody was supposed to come here. Not anymore. Seunghyun saw it in his face.

Jiyong once said he'd never take up heroine. You got used to it too quickly, and after that it didn't give the proper kick, and you took it just to numb the world around, 'cause otherwise all you felt was pain, he said. And you only lived eight years after the first doze, that was the average lifespan of a regular, and he didn't like number eight _that_ much.

It had been eight years since he left Jiyong. Maybe there was indeed something about that number. Cruel irony.

He watched with satisfaction as the drug went down the drain in the kitchen sink, then sterilized the needles and the rest of what he had found with boiling water, and threw it all away.

When he was finished, he heard what he could not, the silence. There was no sound of flowing water coming from the bathroom. But Jiyong couldn't have forgotten how to take a shower, could he? Or–

Seunghyun rushed into the bathroom and sighed with relief. Jiyong was simply standing there naked, still dirty and smelly. He was staring at his forearms.

“It hurts when I put them in hot water,” he said. “I told you, I have some rash, and it's gone really bad, see?” he stretched out his hands. For the time being, Seunghyun ignored the fact that Jiyong didn't tell him about any rash whatsoever, and looked at them closely.

Dozens of rusty red specks, in some places fatigued so many times that they scarred and must have hurt when touched. Poor, foolish Jiyong.

“It's... it's not a rash. Those are needle marks,” he said.

“Oh,” Jiyong inspected them again. “How come there are so many?”

“You tell me,” Seunghyun said, more to himself. “Anyway, I don't think it's a good idea to soak that, either. But you still need to wash.” Seunghyun thought quickly. No, there was no way around it. He would've to help Jiyong. He found some gauze and disinfected the stressed forearms, his touches very gentle, but Jiyong still whimpered a few times. The hands were carefully bandaged then, and with the same careful attention Seunghyun helped Jiyong into the tub. He started to wash him. It should've felt awkward, but it didn't. It even gave Seunghyun a strange sense of satisfaction and pleasure that was by no means sexual, as if by committing himself to this simple act he could erase Jiyong's last few years from memory.

He was aware that Jiyong wasn't letting his eyes of him, the sheepish and trusting expression a stark contrast to his hallowed and eerie face. Seunghyun decided to risk it. He looked up and smiled.

“Seunghyun, I lo–”

Bad decision.

“Let's wash your hair now, shall we?”

He couldn't let Jiyong say that. He felt too vulnerable.

An hour later, Jiyong was sitting on the couch, dressed in pajamas for the lack of any clean clothes, and nibbling at a bowl of plain rice. He'd barely eaten a spoonful and was now trying to hide rice under more rice to convince Seunghyun he'd eaten quite a lot. It was futile.

“Eat. You don't want to starve yourself to death.”

“Maybe I want.”

“Don't.”

For the first time since Seunghyun remembered, Jiyong sent him such a cold, cold glare.

“What do you know? All the time I feel like... like I'm drowning in freezing water. It goes everywhere and solidifies into ice, and my lungs, my intestines are about to burst. You've never felt a pain like that. I wish it would stop. I would've ended it myself if I could stop hoping you'd be back. And now you're, but you say you'll leave again.” Jiyong couldn't handle the spoon well, and little rice chunks kept falling back into the bowl. The two grains that didn't want to stick together strayed onto the floor. “What you've done to us, do you enjoy that? For how much longer, Seunghyun? Aren't you tired? I am.”

“Then stop. How many times did I tell you it's over?”

“No, it's not. I love you and you love me, and you're going to divorce, and I'll be better, and we'll buy a house,  and no dogs will die there, and you won't be scared to hold my hand, and we'll get those rings, and...” Jiyong's expression softened and his eyes stared blankly as he kept blabbering. Seunghyun wanted to cut himself off from all those impossibilities, but couldn't. There was something very wrong happening inside his chest. “... and my hands will heal for good, and you'll touch me again, and we'll always wake up in the same bed, everyday, and...”

“Stop. It's the drug talking. Just stop,” the wrongness in Seunghyun's chest grew to its limit and the bile accumulating for too long burst. He realized that Jiyong's delirious talking had just destroyed his future. However peaceful and happy it could be, the visions that Jiyong unfolded before him in the voice that was all hope, would eat him up from inside in the same way the memories of their times together had been doing for eight years. He knew it was a bad idea to come here.

Against himself, Seunghyun started to cry. “Why is it happening to me? What have I done wrong? I left, I got married, I reinvented myself, because I knew you were going to end up like this, one way or another, and when this moment came I was not supposed to care. So why am I here now? I blamed myself, but this is all your fault. You haven't let me breathe free for years and you ask me if _I_ enjoy it? I don't. Maybe I'm just too proud to admit that you're right. About you and me.”

“... and we'll be very happy...” Jiyong was still staring at the future they didn't have. Until now.

Seunghyun shook his head and wiped his face with his sleeve. He touched Jiyong's hand, but it went unnoticed. Jiyong's mind had played with opioids for too long.

“I've never been as close to saying that I love you as I just did, and you are not even with me now. You're impossible, Yongie,” he said softly. Such things would probably happen to Jiyong, better get used to it. Only the first heartache of his new reality came unexpectedly quickly.

Jiyong finally felt silent, smiled at him, and turned to eating again. The rice kept falling to the floor, wasted like the years behind them. Seunghyun carefully picked up each of them.

A few hours later, Seunghyun was contemplating the darkness that surrounded Jiyong, who was asleep on the couch. He refused to go to his bed. “It's Jolie's coffin,” he said, and started to cry, so Seunghyun didn't press him and let him lie down in the living room. It seemed his own sleep wouldn't come.

Seunghyun's phone lightened up. It was his wife calling. He felt cold sweat running down his spine. For a moment, he considered picking up and telling her he was heading back home. The return to the safe haven of their home and her arms was still possible. Jiyong wouldn't remember his confession. He could still have a normal life.

Jiyong moved in his sleep and something fell from under his pillow. Seunghyun got up from his armchair and went to check if he didn't overlook another drug supply. But it was his own photograph, quite old and with some suspicious stains on it. And with multiple fingerprints.

“Normal doesn't exist,” he echoed Jiyong's words from long time ago.

The screen of his ignored phone went black again.


	9. Heartmender

There were the hands that adjusted the blanket when he was falling asleep, and the eyes that watched over him when he was waking up. Warm hands, good eyes. Jiong didn't know how it happened, but Seunghyun didn't leave on the next day, or the day after, spending his time force-feeding him and cleaning the apartment. Jiyong followed him everywhere. Seunghyun's presence was too precious to lose even one moment of it. But then Jiyong lost him, lost the count of days, bowls of unfinished soup, stacks of laundry and bags of garbage that left his place, he could barely manage to count his own fingers, 'cause he was swallowed by a black hole filled with those eight-legged things that crawled all over him. Later, he recalled that he had been overthrowing his bedroom and shouting at Seunghyun, claiming that he would die if he couldn't get what he needed, and Seunghyun did something to the door, so he couldn't leave the place and just buy it.

Then a doctor came to see him, he forced his eyelids open and peered into the misty darkness of his eyes with cruel light (the mist filled the rooms and the darkness brimmed his body, shadows of both where everywhere). “It's the withdrawal syndrome. His symptoms should pass in the next forty-eight hours,” he said, and gave Jiyong something that didn't make him feel any better, but seemed to have sucked out all of his strength. His angry fits ended, but now Jiyong dragged himself out of bed with difficulty. He couldn't control the basics of his own body. He would wake up shaking, his face red and sweaty. “Sorry, I'm so sorry,” he mumbled, but Seunghyun would only say, “It's nothing, could happen to anybody,” and take him to wash.

Water mingled with tears. “Sorry, I'm so sorry.”

His eyes closed to the sight of Seunghyun's shadow pacing on the background of the carpet in the light coming from the kitchen, and opened to too many faces, staring at him with their own hollow eyes. He tried to locate Seunghyun among them, but then butterflies started scattering white powder around him. He tried to grasp it and lick it from his fingers, but the faces grew hands and caught him. They bit and sucked on his digits. He was trying to pull away, but couldn’t. When they suddenly let him go, he fell down. He tried to crawl away as fast as possible, but the ground was slippery. Then somebody manhandled him on the bed and pinned him down. He fought, and felt cold water on his face. He shook, but then warmth enveloped him.

“Calm down,” Seunghyun said, and Jiyong did. His eyes fluttered. Seunghyun's face was really close and Jiyong realized that the warmth was coming from his body. For the first time in what seemed like eternity, his mind was clear.

“We're in one bed,” he said. It was the truth. It was the reality. He was certain.

“You fell from the couch. You've been delirious. I brought you here, I was afraid you'd hurt yourself, so I had to hold you down,” Seunghyun explained. Not important.

“We're in one bed.” The thought was a like a heartbeat, he knew he wasn't dead any longer.

“We are,” Seunghyun's fingers stroked his back. Bliss. Peace.

“I... I've missed something, haven't I? Something between you and me. You came here and– and– then I was only trouble, I think,” shame pooled inside his stomach as he began to recall a few images from the last few days. How long was it? He couldn't say.

“Yes, quite so,” Seunghyun nodded and sighed. “But then, you always are.”

“But you've stayed.”

“Yes. I couldn't leave you. I can't. I love you too much to pretend any longer.”

There was no preamble to that, no romantic circumstances, and Jiyong had always believed in it, he had told Seunghyun that it was like this so many times, but he still felt heat spreading in his body, which had felt so cold for so long. Life was coming back to him in gusts, and he could barely stand it, feeble as he was. He kept staring at Seunghyun, his mouth agape but voice lost, and his fingers were clenching on Seunghyun's flesh. It probably hurt, yet Seunghyun didn't say a word of complaint. Instead, he held him tighter, so Jiyong's head nestled close to his heart. Jiyong closed his eyes. All would be fine now.

It was more than fine. After a few good, long moments, Seunghyun moved restlessly and whispered, his breath raising the hair on Jiyong's neck, “Kiss... Let's kiss.”

It was as if after lying on cold pavement and munching on it for years, someone put soft petals on his lips. He told Seunghyun that, and was kissed more. After the petals came stargazing, as Jiyong counted the lights appearing in Seunghyun's eyes before he fell asleep. There were no dreams. Bad ones disappeared and all the good ones had just happened.

He woke up to Seunghyun's voice.

“I'll come home today... Half-past three? Yes, fine by me... I know, I didn't expect you to... I'm sorry... I'll explain it to you.”

A wave of anxiety overcame him. It was obvious who Seunghyun was talking to. _I'll come home..._ Of course Jiyong's apartment wasn't his home, but still, talking so politely, apologetically, with such softness to somebody else, and especially... No, he couldn't leave, he said he wouldn't, couldn't–

Jiyong wanted to rush to him, but he only stumbled from the bed. He was still weak.

“What are you up to? You should rest. I'll bring your breakfast here,” Seunghyun heard the commotion and came to the bedroom.

“And then you'll leave?”

“What?”

“You told your wife you were coming back home, I heard you!” Jiyong tried to stand up, but failed. “Who are you lying to now, me or her?

“It's not like that. I haven't been home for a week. She is worried. I need to talk to her,” Seunghyun helped him climb on the bed again and sat next to him. Jiyong used the opportunity to cling to his arm. He didn't intend to let him go.

“You haven't told her about us, have you?” he asked.

“No. I couldn't force myself to pick up her calls, I only texted her. I think owe her the truth, though, after all those years,” Seunghyun suddenly seemed very tired. “I've messed up my life, but it's fine, it was my choice. But I've messed up her life too, and that's bad. I was supposed to take care of her, and now... I'm hopeless when it comes to other people. Take your own example.”

Jiyong fought the primary instinct to say, 'So what that she suffers? She had you for longer than I've ever had. She can't give you what you need, I can,' but he stopped mid-thought. Was it true? Maybe eight years ago, but now? His life was completely rotten, he did nothing most of the time. How did he even look in Seunghyun's eyes? He didn't remember when was the last time he saw himself in a mirror. No, he did. It was when he crashed the cruel thing with a bottle.

Seunghyun sighed. He was weighing his options, Jiyong could see it well. No wonder. Jiyong had that strange kind of freedom when he didn't have to choose, 'cause he had nothing apart from Seunghyun. Everything else was lost. Seunghyun's situation was different. Jiyong let go of his arm.

“You know, it could be like before. You don't have to tell her. I could keep a low profile, you could just visit me and–”

“No. No more lies,” Seunghyun patted his back. “Besides, that's not what you want, right? A house for us and waking up in the same bed. You told me when I came here. I want to do something right for once, and give you that. I wasted too much time.”

Jiyong felt a nasty lump in his throat, which disappeared when Seunghyun kissed him and didn't stop for five full minutes. Jiyong was so happy that he ate all of the breakfast. He threw it up later, but he was quite sure Seunghyun hadn't noticed it. Okay, maybe he had, 'cause he made a point of Jiyong having an extra large lunch. Nevermind, he was there and everything he did proved how much he cared. Jiyong was breathing pure hydrogen and floating five centimeters above the ground with each slightly misplaced step.

“I have to go. It's time,” Seunghyun gently shrugged him off, when he was snoozing on his shoulder. “I should be back in a few hours, but I can't be sure. It won't be easy, but don't worry. I'll definitely be back. Try to rest. I charged your phone, so call me if something's wrong.”

Jiyong put up a confident face, but his smile faded as soon as the door closed behind Seunghyun. He touched his head with one hand, then with both hands. He shook it. Nothing. He didn't remember where Seunghyun was supposed to go. He must've told him, it was something important, but Jiyong's mind was blank.

“What the hell? Why can't I– ?”

He sat on the floor, head between his knees. He will remember, he will, just let him focus. He soon started too sweat. His head hurt. But he will remember, he will mend that broken piece inside his head, he will, he was only too tired now...

“Yongie, you've been waiting here for me all this time? You should've gone to bed if you were sleepy,” Seunghyun scooped him from the floor. “I told you it might take long. But there will be a divorce. I think she anticipated the end. She told me she knew I had a dark secret. She still cried, though.”

Jiyong blinked.

“That's something I can sympathize with,” he said slowly. Now he knew. Still, he didn't remember it himself. This was bad. But Seunghyun was back, and this time for good, so it had to be fine, right? He believed in that truth for too long.

Although he was told to sleep, he waited for Seunghyun. His shower took awfully long.

The adrenaline from yesterday was gone. To think he had been so confident he'd never be sad if Seunghyun was by his side. He didn't expect something like that to happen, though. On high for too long, he didn't notice the damage. Thoughts, memories disappearing suddenly. Such shame. What would Seunghyun do if he knew? Would he treat him the same?

When Seunghyun entered the room, Jiyong threw himself at him with such force that he nearly lost his balance.

“What's wrong? I told you she agreed.”

“It's not that... It's just that– ”

_Something happened to my head._ Tell him. Don't tell him. Don't scare him.

“I need your help. I– I have problems ,” he managed.

“I know,” Seunghyun smiled reassuringly. “We'll figure everything out. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

What? As if Jiyong knew.

“Just... mend me.”

“Not very specific, are you? Don't worry, we'll figure it out.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

Jiyong cried, and he couldn't force himself to tell Seughyun why. Not now. Tomorrow. Yes.

When he woke up the next morning, the sun was ablaze as it poured into his bedroom. It was warm and golden, and it looked beautiful on Seunghyun's skin, when Jiyong turned on his side and saw him. He felt as if he was bathing in honey. It was equally sweet when Seunghyun muttered his name in his sleep, and his arm landed  on Jiyong's  hip.

There was something... something that he should tell Seunghyun. What was it? Nevermind. If he didn't remember, it probably wasn't that important.

Seunghyun opened his eyes and looked at him. Everything was perfectly alright.


	10. Lost and found

In the next few weeks, Seunghyun came to think that, quite surprisingly, things were not going as bad as he predicted. At least as far as Jiyong was concerned, and that was what counted. Dragging him through multiple doctors’ offices paid off with the diagnosis of no incurable diseases plaguing his body. Good diet resulted in a few gained kilos that were gradually replacing the skeletal limbs, which Seunghyun was cautious to brush upon in case they broke like twigs, with structures pink and soft, which he would like to touch very much. He decided to leave that particular topic aside though, because Jiyong was still sleeping over twelve hours a day, with an extra nap in the afternoon. His organism was getting used to everyday life very slowly.

Apart from the visits in the clinic, Jiyong barely went out, and certainly not on his own. Just after he got better, Seunghyun wanted to take him to a park, but was refused.

“People recognizing me. People _not_ recognizing me. I don't know what scares me more. I can't bring back who I used to be, yet I still– ” Jiyong blinked rapidly and his eyelashes became a little bit moist. “I guess I'm too greedy. But you're with me, so everything is going to be fine, right?”

Poor Yongie. Don’t be sad, Yongie.

Seunghyun didn’t press, not yet, because that queer agoraphobia meant that he had complete control over where and what for Jiyong was leaving the apartment. He feared the reprises of the withdrawal syndrome and drugs somehow finding their way to the locked up apartment, but there were only those quiet and shaky times when Jiyong would take the pill he was prescribed, ask Seunghyun for a cigarette, and forbid him to leave his side even for one moment. It seemed that physical contact was the crucial part of this self-administered therapy. Somehow, it was working out, with the methadone pills helping only a little, as the take-home package contained placebo, but Jiyong needn’t know that. He needn’t know about some other things, too.

Seunghyun wanted to put an end to all the lies in his life, but he was forced to accept a basic truth: you couldn’t be happy without lying a little. And certainly he couldn’t make Jiyong as happy and carefree as he wanted without a few omissions about the reality outside his apartment. Or so he believed.

Consider his divorce. Naturally, he spared Jiyong the details of the conversation he had with his wife. He wanted him to believe that ending the marriage came to him effortlessly, so he couldn’t tell him that she was not the only one who cried. Seunghyun was fully aware that they could’ve been a great couple. He felt that by her side he’d finally matured, he’d become more focused on someone other than himself. The problem was that there had been Jiyong in his life before, and that new adult Seunghyun couldn’t ignore him in the way the irresponsible brat he used to be did in the past. If eight years ago he had had the mindset that the marriage taught him, he would’ve dealt with Jiyong differently. He would’ve been able to discriminate between playing and true feelings, and draw conclusions for himself. Moreover, he wouldn’t have used another person to heal his own G-withdrawal syndrome.

He owed his growing up to his wife and now the poor thing finally learned how he had paid her back. Funny, she made such a fuss for over-watering her favorite pot-plant, but when he told her about Jiyong, she didn’t shout.

“I knew. I knew he was trouble. I disliked him from the wedding day and now I understand why,” she said before she started to cry. Waiting for her to calm down, he made them a cup of tea. For the last time, they sat together at the dining table (they went through hell at the customs to transport it from Italy, the memories suddenly came back to him). Throughout those four years together, he’d never talked to her as honestly as he did that day.

“I'm sorry,” was all he managed when he was finished. It was over.

Him crying, her hugging him for the last time, and a part of him that loved her for doing what Jiyong found impossible to do – let him go – those were the things Jiyong needn't to know about. They would only make him feel more insecure.

Seunghyun was trying to keep him as far as possible from the entire divorce business. His wife, who anticipated some kind of catastrophe for quite a time, was coming to terms with it quite well, but it was a complete shock for their families. Seunghyun was the one to answer and explain, to take the responsibility he wanted and the blame he deserved. It was her only condition and he supposed it was fair. They called him, his parents, her parents, asking why, demanding him to reconsider. Then, when he told them truth, they always started to shout. He heard them out patiently, until they called Jiyong nasty names, when he would hang up.

He didn’t intend to share the details with everybody, but the news soon got around, and reached further than he thought. People enjoyed a good gossip too much to just let them be, with their luminous past. He realized that when Youngbae called him. Of course, he had sent him a word that he checked on Jiyong and that he’d try to help him out, but he skipped the crux of the matter at that time.

“When you told me you were going to take care of things, I didn’t think it meant getting along with whatever fantasies he had about you two. He either did something to your head, or you lied to me before. Somehow, I can’t believe he is in any state to manipulate anybody right now.”

“I’ve always been a big liar. The biggest to myself. It’s a long story.”

“How long?”

“Eight years… No, eight years ago I left him. Almost ten years.”

“God,” Youngbae fell silent for a very long moment. “I don’t even know what to make of it – what to say – I’ve never thought you were – ”

“I was what?”

“You know… Like him.”

“That’s what you’re worrying about know? If I’m gay or not? Thanks.”

“Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. It doesn't matter, not after everything else that happened. It's just that I thought we were friends, but it seems I knew close to nothing about you and him. Something is off with this world, where the things that really mean to you are the ones you cannot talk about,” Youngbae sighed.

“It could've been different if people weren't cowards,” reflected Seunghyun gloomily, thinking about himself.

“And if other people opened their eyes and looked a bit further then their own big noses,” Youngbae joined in the gloom, probably thinking about himself too. “Always too late... So I was right. He was waiting for you all that time, wasn't he? He's probably the most stubborn and foolish guy I know. But I s'pose he's better now, when he knows he won. As long as you don't change your mind again and stay with him, that is. You know what I'm driving at? You're making him dependent on your presence. It's a one way road, and there are bound to be problems. With him, with people around you. Can you handle that?”

“I'll have to. I want to.”

“Let's make this clear, Seunghyun. Guilt is not something you can build a happy relationship on, you know that? Even if you tell yourself that it's the only thing that can save his life.”

Youngbae was wrong. Just like everybody else in the recent years, he assumed Jiyong was a worrisome burden, incapable of giving anybody anything but shame and despair. Seunghyun knew that line of thinking, he used to be its most devoted follower before any moral authority in this country decided to cross Jiyong out of the national pantheon.

“I'm not a martyr type, if that's what you think. I'm not that noble. I'm just following the one passion in my life that lasts. I've always been thinking that everything is bound to end sooner or later, especially the good things. For the first I'm forced to reconsider, and I never thought I would feel so relieved. Guilt? I'm not building this on guilt, but on hope. Don’t think he’s the weak one and I’m the strong one, who he would live off. He’s never given up, when everybody else would have. Should have. Just as you said, he's the most naïve fool I know, and yet all the answers he has are correct for me.”

Once again, there was a long silence on the other side of the line.

“You know, I've never thought you would be saying things like that. Sounds more like him,” Youngbae said at last. “Seems like I underestimated this thing between the two of you. But that's what you get for believing the words of 'a close friend' quoted online.”

It took a moment for Seunghyun's mind to register that.

“Wait, that's where you learned about us?”

“'Course, you haven't told me yourself, mate. How else could I know? You might think you've come out of the spotlight, but that's not up to you to decide. So be careful when you go out. Remember the old routine.”

Great. Just what he needed, people publishing sneaky snapshots of Jiyong, when he still wasn't confident enough to let Seunghyun take a photo of himself for their own use. It couldn't be helped, though. Youngbae was right. Have a good enough scandal, and people suddenly remember you. Moths trying to overshadow his very own, very precious light.

But those shadows, they were easy, they would pass with time. There were others, which he feared could only grow. Jiyong's memory lapses. The doctor Seunghyun confided in when they were alone said nothing could be done about it, that it was too late. Something clicked wrong inside Jiyong's head, something was eternally lost, and Seunghyun would have to live knowing it was his fault, because he'd been too much of a coward for too long.

Luckily, Jiyong didn't realize something was wrong with him and Seunghyun intended the situation to stay that way. There was no need to tell him, it wouldn't help anything, but only make him feel embarrassed and scared of what that might turn him into.

It was a blessing that he didn't know. Or would have been, were it true, but Seunghyun learned it later, exactly one month after his divorce papers were signed.

It was a quiet evening, a good conclusion to a homely day spent at deciding which of the catalog houses would be the one Jiyong talked about on that first bitter-sweet day of their reunion. It made Seunghyun excited also because he could indulge the interior designer he let slumber when he came to this apartment three months ago.

He looked at the pictures and even found himself singing a little, something he hadn't done for a long time, and thought he didn't miss it. He felt as if all the parts of him were back in place, including that one.

_I still can’t forget you_   
_No I don’t think I ever will,_   
_even ’til the day I die, yeah_   
_Did the scars I gave you heal?_   
_I’m sorry because I never got to do anything for you_

“I can hear some good music in here,” Jiyong went out of the bathroom, drying his messy hair with a towel. “Even though you're the one singing it, I still like it. I wish I could write something like that.”

“Bet you do,” Seunghyun smiled. “Fishing for compliments about your old song?”

Jiyong blinked, then casted his eyes down, away from Seunghyun's smile. His face turned bright red. “Yeah, 'course I do. This was around our debut time, right?”

Then it dawned on Seunghyun. Jiyong wasn't teasing. He didn't remember the song. “Lies” were released a year after their debut. Now he was trying to cover up for the fact that he could forget about something like that, afraid that Seunghyun might discover the truth.

Seunghyun discarded the sketches and got up from the sofa. He touched Jiyong's face delicately, put an arm around him for support, because he looked as if he was about to break.

“Yongie...”

The towel fell to the floor. Jiyong started to cry. Seunghyun's heart broke.

“Yongie, don't let it bother you. It's no big deal.”

“What isn't? That I don't remember my own songs?” Jiyong's fingers were now digging into Seunghyun's shirt nervously. “I was supposed to tell you, but I didn't want to make you worried. Thought I could keep it from you forever... That I – that there are those blanks in my mind. One moment I'm telling you goodbye, and in the next one I don't remember where did you even go. Or that I –”

“I know,” Seunghyun interrupted him. “I've known about the memory lapses since the first day I came here. I told the doctor, but he said it couldn't be helped, so I also didn't want you to worry and decided to act as if nothing happened. I guess we did the same thing,” he kissed Jiyong's head and then touched their foreheads together.

“I feel so ashamed,” Jiyong whispered.

“You shouldn't. You've been through a lot.”

“But what if I forget about something really important?”

“I'll be there to help you remember,” Seunghyun reassured him.

“What if it's something about you? Like I wake up one day and I don't remember your name? I don't want that, I'm so scared when I think about it.”

Seunghyun thought for a while. Personally, he didn't think it was possible. He didn't want to believe that.

“Do you remember that day in the summer 2013, just before “Coup d'Etat” was released? You were stressed out, and you got sick. You closed yourself in the bathroom.”

Jiyong nodded.

“You managed to get me out of there somehow and made me sit on the terrace, to catch some fresh air. But it was so hot I couldn't stand it, so you filled the bathtub with cold water and got in there with me. You said then... You're amazing and beautiful, and people will see that even more through this album, and those who won't are fools not worth worrying about.”

“You said that you'd never forget that. And you still remember it,” Seunghyun smiled. He cherished that memory himself.

Jiyong also smiled. He wasn't crying anymore.

“I fell in love with you that day, you know.”

Seunghyun's heart, just broken, was whole again, and burning in his chest, doing some pretty crazy dancing on his ribs.

“I think... it's time for bed,” he said, somehow overcoming the lump in his throat.

“No, I don't want to sleep yet,” Jiyong made a face at him. “You always send me to bed too early, I don't need so much rest anymore.”

“When I said bed, I wasn't thinking about letting you sleep,” Seunghyun explained in a hoarse voice.

“Uh. Uh-huh,” Jiyong's palm groped his arm, and it went down to catch his hand. Hands connected, eyes locked on each other, they went to the bedroom. There was some fighting about lights off, light on, and Seunghyun didn't understand why, because they never had that problem before.

“I want to see you. Don't you want to see me?”

“I do. But I don't want to see myself yet.”

Seunghyun didn't press. Things don't heal that easily. Just like the scars on Jiyong's forearms, which would never completely disappear. Seunghyun wanted to kiss them, show he accepted everything, the past, the present, and the future Jiyong had to offer.

“Does it hurt? Are they sensitive?” he asked, sensing how Jiyong's muscles tensed.

“No, it feels good. It's just... Don't they repel you?”

“Not in the least. Relax.”

Jiyong did, and Seunghyun lavished his forearms with kisses and licks. Then he went further, to the shoulders and neck, and ears, up to the very top of Jiyong's head, only to go lower and spend a few blissful minutes on the chest and stomach, enjoying the sounds his mouth elicited from Jiyong's. He couldn't wait to go even lower, to the most heated place, but he only managed to kiss it once before Jiyong groaned and flipped them over.

“My turn,” he said and Seunghyun would be damned if he regretted that turnout of events. Was it the same man, crouched, pressed to the window pane, so pitiful and powerless, that was now kissing his body to the point of biting and touching it to the point of bruising? It couldn't be, the eyes were completely different, clouded with passion and drunk with being alive again. Seunghyun could look in them for the rest of his life.

It was impossible now, though, because Jiyong's face was busy between his legs, and if Seunghyun wanted to do anything more tonight, he had to put a stop to it.

“How do you want it?” he asked.

“I want to see your face closely. I want to see how much you enjoy what we're doing.”

“You're going to feel it, I'll make sure of that.”

There was some shuffling in the nightstand, and a short trip to the bathroom to find something suitable for the occasion. Then Jiyong was lying on his back, his body a fire burning Seunghyun's fingers first, and finally all of him, when their bodies tangled and danced. They were fulfilling their promises, Jiyong's eyes not leaving Seunghyun's face, and Seunghyun making Jiyong moan and shake each time he moved. Somehow, one of Jiyong's legs landed behind Seunghyun's back, while the other was over his shoulder.

It was too good, too hot. Their bodies quaked, there was a scream and a whispered 'I love you', but Seunghyun wasn't sure who was responsible for what. Maybe both of them, and the sounds melted into unison.

Jiyong looked exactly as Seunghyun felt, an image of exertion mixed with satisfaction. He still kept his eyes fixed on Seunghyun and everything in them spoke of love so pure that it was a stark contrast to the debauched state of his body. Seunghyun found that combination hypnotizing.

“You're beautiful,” he said.

“You're the beautiful one here,” Jiyong smiled.

“No, I'm only good-looking. It's not the same.”

They kissed, and kissed some more. Then they lied in the darkness, holding onto each other, and it felt almost as good as lovemaking. They were so preoccupied with it that they couldn't sleep until the dawn. They decided to go for a walk, undisturbed by anybody in the city still asleep and peaceful. They held hands.

There was a moment, very short, when they were going back home and Jiyong was hesitant as to which corner they should take, even though he had walked that route many times before. But Seunghyun's hand held his surely, guiding him, so he could find his way.

It had to be like that, Seunghyun reflected. Some things were lost and could never be as they were. Other ones were damaged beyond repair. Both would cause them pain. But, all in all, they'd never been better.

 


	11. The house, the song, and the free

All the windows were open, letting in the August air. Soft wind ran around the house freely, making everything fresh and clear. The furniture Seunghyun had so carefully chosen was left ignored, as they were sitting on the floor next to each other, the splendid view of the garden and the city stretching in front of them. Thin bands of white gold reflected the sun rays. Jiyong's birthday present.

“Are you sure that's what you want?” Seunghyun was asking him a week ago. “It's just a piece of jewelery, I know it best.”

“Maybe. It's just a whim of mine, really. A silly dream I've had for years. It began when I was in the army, everything already seemed like shit, and then came the news about your wedding... I thought I'd go crazy, and the only way to lull myself into sleep at night was to think about a sort of mock version of the whole ceremony, with you and me. I s'pose I was already in pretty bad shape then, to act it out in my head, up to the details of our suits. So indulge me with that one. You said you'd give me anything I wanted. ”

Of course, Seunghyun said he'd have to think it over, but on the eighteenth Jiyong found a little box on his pillow. Seunghyun liked to spoil him these days.

Jiyong moved his fingers and let the light play with the metal. Then he took Seunghyun's hand and did the same. Two shiny loops, signs of passion that comes to no end.

_We're all men of passion here._

Who said that? What was it about? He couldn't recall, but Seunghyun said that if he didn't remember something, it probably wasn't important. Jiyong suspected there were more of those, forgotten people, destinations, words. He could always ask, but he was under the impression that Seunghyun was cutting out the pieces of reality that didn't fit the happiness they had. Maybe it was better that way. But there were times he wanted to know.

“Tell me, Seunghyun, why did we even break up?”

Seunghyun gave him a long look.

“Why do you want to talk about it today?”

“We had a fight over the drugs, right? That's why you left.”

“Yes.”

“Nothing else happened?”

“Nothing.”

“You know that if you're lying to me and I remember at some point, I'll be mad at you.”

“Nothing else happened. Trust me.”

Jiyong did. Now it was Seunghyun's hand playing with his, before each of his fingers, his wrist, the crook of his elbow, and finally his lips were kissed. Warmth. Safety. Passion. The world. There was all in it.

“Sing for me. I want to hear it again,” said Seunghyun, letting him breathe finally.

“What?” asked Jiyong.

“You know what. Your latest.”

“You mean, my last? I won't write anything anymore, since I'll forget it anyway. I told you.”

“Yeah, right. Like I believe you could ever give up on something you love.”

Jiyong smiled and took a deep breath. It came so easily, it was still coming so easily, the beats, the rhythm, the words, he could arrange them in a glimpse of an eye. He didn't lose it.

 

> _There's something nobody believes in_   
>  _the house two people can live in_   
>  _built on total mess,_   
>  _self-made hell, yes_   
>  _It's a story of a dragon who ate its own tail_   
>  _peeled of his 88 million scales_   
>  _'til the top dragon-tamer joined his tale_   
>  _In the end, their fight was a tie_   
>  _a bond, and now they'll fly_
> 
> _You know where this goes?_   
>  _Lose my flow, I'm not in the know_   
>  _Fame, fail, fame_   
>  _always the same_   
>  _But I know I can stay strong_   
>  _if you stay with me all along_
> 
> _The dragon was just a parable_   
>  _my suit to make cold bearable_   
>  _All's so cold but my heart's like a shot_   
>  _Like the core of a star, it's so hot_   
>  _I go to the streets at night,_   
>  _Everybody, turn off the light_   
>  _I gotta talk to my fellow stars_   
>  _they all know, had their own falls_   
>  _But only I know how to go up_   
>  _high high up, up to the top_
> 
> _You know where this goes?_   
>  _Lose my flow, I'm not in the know_   
>  _Fame, fail, fame_   
>  _always the same_   
>  _But I know I can stay strong_   
>  _if you stay with me all along_
> 
> _How this ends? Yes, there's the house_   
>  _where I dance my life with a bounce_   
>  _where I tear my voice 'til I'm dumb_   
>  _where I let my body go numb_   
>  _'cause in the house, there is you_   
>  _that daily makes me brand new_
> 
> _I, you, I, you, we  
>  the two are free_

Seunghyun smiled. The world smiled. That was it.

**Author's Note:**

> If you are interested, please check out the gift set, oh pardon, the gif set the story got from hollowsosleepy at tumblr:  
> http://hollowsosleepy.tumblr.com/post/81291088091/they-broke-up-there-was-nothing-to-discuss-no


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